


the last of the real ones

by onArete



Category: Incredibles (Pixar Movies), The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, Incredibles 2, Incredibles 2 AU, M/M, TAZ meets the Incredibles, incredibles - Freeform, who let these idiots be superheroes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-20
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2019-11-16 04:19:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 18,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18087296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onArete/pseuds/onArete
Summary: If anybody looks at the lease, they’ll see that the house actually belongs to Julia and Magnus Burnsides.  But walking inside, they’d have a harder time figuring out who’s actually in charge, and who’s a weird roommate, or quasi-uncle, or just some kid who wandered in.They still laughingly argue about how Taako and Lup got there.“No,” Julia will insist, chuckling, “I’m pretty sure that I we helped them stop that bank robbery.”“Nuh-uh,” Magnus will laugh back, “They were robbing the bank but they liked us enough to stop!”And then Taako will throw a loose brick in their general direction, and Magnus will catch it and crush it, and whatever criminal they’re super-illegally pursuing will be intimidated enough to surrender right there, or at least freeze long enough for Davenport to fly into his face and knock him out.Oh, yeah.Because the Burnsides and the Taaco twins and Davenport aren’t just weird suburban roommates.  They’re also superheroes.





	1. Taako

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taako really needs a good superhero name.

“Agent Fisher interrogating.  State your name, please.”

He’s sitting at some metal table, and there’s a bright light shining right down on him, and all he knows to do is obey.  “Kravitz McAllister?”

“Tell me about the incident.”

“So, I’m at the cooking competition, right?  One of my mom’s friends, Paloma, was competing.  But I’m in the parking lot afterwards, and... well.  There’s this chef who caters to the mortuary where I work.  He was there.”

(“You’re... Taako, right?”

“Y’know, from TV?” he replies, and winks.)

“I sorta knew him, I guess, but pretty recently he... changed.  In a good way! He was more... confident. Sure of himself. And he, um, asked me out.  We’re supposed to go to the Chug’n Squeeze this Friday.

“But then this...  _ thing  _ happened in the parking lot.  I was trying to find my mom’s car, she never remembers where she parked it--”

(“Behold, the Underminer!”)

“And so I do the brave thing and hide behind a car, but then I look over and I see these boots.”

(“Aw, c’mon, really?” somebody complains.  “Gonna ruin my makeup.”

“Fuck you!” somebody else replies, cheerful.)

“And they look like, like superheroes, right?  So I inch closer to try and get a closer look. A bunch of them race off after the-- the Underminer, is that  _ really  _ his name?”

“Unfortunately,” replies Agent Fisher.

Kravitz shakes his head a little.  Still reeling from what happened. “And one of the supers dives forward to save this, um, plate thing.  And his mask falls off.”

(“Hi, Krav...” says Taako, eyes wide, afraid.  “Uh, this isn’t... it’s a new fashion, uh... gotta go!”)

“And he jumps behind a car, and I... run outta there.  Not that... supers are bad, per se, it’s just... the Underminer thing was going crazy and I didn’t know where my moms were.”  A metal...  _ thing  _ lowers from the ceiling, moves closer and closer to Kravitz’s face.  It’s got a blinking red light on it. “What’s that?”

“Did you tell anyone else about this?” asks Agent Fisher.  “Your moms, perhaps?”

“No,” Kravitz replies, still staring at the machine.  “I mean... I really like this guy. It’s gonna be weird, now, right?  We were supposed to go on a date on Friday. I wish... I wish I could just forget seeing him in that suit.”

“Oh, you will,” says Agent Fisher’s voice, disembodied.  “You will.”

Out of the machine snakes a tiny tube, inserting itself into his mouth, and he sputters around it.  A brackish fluid begins to creep towards him.

And everything turns to static.

\---

It starts at Taako’s cooking competition.  Lup’s right there in the stands, and Magnus has Julia on his shoulders waving a huge sign with his name on it.  Davenport’s blowing a shrill whistle that he’s pretty sure isn’t allowed in this sort of thing.

“Cook ‘em, babe!” Lup hollers.

“Not too well!” Julia shouts.

Taako flips them off lazily, sauteeing his onions in his pan with his other hand.  This is the one thing that he doesn’t need a superpower for, after all. This is where Taako  _ excels _ .

Even with his weird superpowered family cheering him on, he takes first place, easily.  Yeah, Taako’s got a steady day job as a chef, but he likes trophies. And it never hurt to have something else on your resume, right?

It’s not like he can put his victories against the Forces of Evil aka Supervillains and Specifically Syndrome down on his “special interests” list.

Taako wins first place, and he holds his golden plate aloft over his head, staring out at his family.  The five of them walk to the parking lot together, bubbling over his victory.

And then the ground begins to bubble, asphalt cracking apart beneath their feet.

“Aw, shit,” Magnus says conversationally, already slapping his mask on and tearing his flannel shirt to reveal his red supersuit.  Mr. Incredible is ready to roll.

“Dammit,” says Julia cheerfully, half a second ahead of Magnus in suiting up to fight.  Elastigirl, to the rescue!

“Aw, c’mon, really?” Taako complains, handing his golden plate to Lup to pull his mask out from his boot.  “Gonna ruin my makeup.” He needs to get a cool superhero name.

“Fuck you,” Lup says cheerfully, handing the plate to Davenport to put on her own mask.  She likes to say that her hero name is Dash, but that’s really shitty. Bor-ing.

“Why am I holding the plate?” asks Davenport, faintly annoyed.

“Taako, hold your own plate,” Julia says, already racing away from them.

Magnus runs after her, and with a laugh, Lup follows, her superspeed pushing her away from them.

One-handed, Davenport manages to secure his mask, and slowly rises into the air.  The Starblaster is ready for action!

It would be a very cool, comic book style moment if he hadn’t proceeded to drop the golden plate right next to Taako.

“Fuck you!” Taako shouts, diving forward on the asphalt to snatch it out of the air.  Thankfully, the new super suits Lucretia’d made for them don’t tear easily.

“Fuckin’ rugburn,” he mutters, polishing a smudge of the plate against his arm, and carefully setting the plate on the ground.  Oh, fuck, where’d his mask go--

“Um...”

He spins on instinct, eyes wide open, mask nowhere to be seen.

Oh,  _ fuck _ .  Gods forsaken  _ fuck fuck fuck _ .

See, superheroes are illegal.  And yeah there’s some wack mole thing digging up the parking lot outside the cooking competition, but they’re still against the rules.

Taako is not supposed to exist, and neither is his family.

They do anyway, because they don’t give a solitary fuck what the world tells them to do.

But they’re  _ very  _ not supposed to be seen by people without masks on.  And across the parking lot, Taako is caught in the eyes of that cute guy who works at the mortuary he caters to.

Kravitz, stammering something.

“Hi, Krav...” he manages, feeling every thump thump thump of his heartbeat.  “Uh, this isn’t... it’s a new fashion, uh... gotta go!”

Taako ducks behind a car, heart thundering.  He scoops up his mask, plasters it against his face.  This is  _ so bad _ .

There’s a screech as a car goes flying over his head.  

With a sigh, he rises to his feet, steady in high-heeled boots, and starts to run.  A purple bubble blossoms between his hands, braid trailing down his back. Kravitz seeing him doesn’t fuckin’ matter now: they’ve got a world to save.

\---

It... does not go too great.  Yeah, Taako’s sure they saved people-- and fuck yeah they saved the capitol building!-- but there’s government agents pointing guns at them and Taako’s pulled away from Lup.

Magnus and Julia are arguing, Lup is kicking and screaming, and Taako is clawing at everything he can reach.  Only Davenport goes quietly.

\---

“The Superhero Relocation Program is over,” says Fisher, the older person who’s managed the Program as long as Taako can remember.  “We’re just out of funds. I’m so sorry. We’ll be able to put you up in a hotel for two weeks, but that’s it.”

“Thanks for everything, Fisher,” says Julia, smiling gently at him.

Taako wants to rage and scream and shout.  Taako does none of those things.

They pack up their bags under the cover of night.  He has to leave behind most of his cooking stuff, much to his dismay, and the golden plate trophy was lost to the wreckage of the Underminer’s attack.  

Not that it fuckin’ matters now.  He’s gonna have to start all over again.

Taako sits by Lup in the back of the bus without windows, kicking his feet against Magnus’s seat in front of him.  It’s petty, but then, he never claimed not to be.

This is fuckin’ awful.

“Stop it, Koko,” says Lup, sounding tired.

“Fuck off,” he retorts, too worn out for something more clever.

“Please don’t fuck in the bus,” says Davenport.

Julia laughs, but it’s short and bitter, and nothing quite feels right.

\---

Taako doesn’t sleep much, and neither does Magnus.  They spend a sleepless night at the shitty little hotel, sitting at the desk chairs that nobody ever actually  _ uses _ , silent.

“Krav saw me,” he finally says.

“Who?” asks Magnus, looking up from the wooden duck that he’s carving.  Wood shavings litter the carpet.

“Kravitz.  Guy from the mortuary I work at.”

“Saw you... like what?” he frowns.

“Without my mask,” Taako huffs.  “Jeezy creezy, Mags, catch a hint.”

Magnus shrugs, but his shoulders seem tenser than before.  In that moment, he looks old. Worn out. “I’m gonna try to go to bed, I guess.”

“Fuck, I will too, then,” he says, and tumbles into the pullout bed and tugs his half of the sheets back from Lup.  They used to share beds like this when they were kids, and she hasn’t gotten better about hogging the blankets.

But Taako doesn’t sleep.

Try as he might, he can’t.

Which is why he’s awake when Magnus tiptoes over to the landline, and carefully presses the buttons.  Beep beep, beep beep beep. Who’s he calling?

“Hello?” says Magnus, and there’s a pause.  “Fisher. Glad I caught you.”

Silence.

Then, “Yeah.  We need your help.  Um, some guy saw Taako, some Kravitz fellow.  Works at a mortuary?”

A pause.  Fisher must be speaking.  Taako feels cold all over even though he’s wrestled a couple of blankets back from his twin sister.  “Okay. Yeah, okay. Thanks, Fisher.”

By the time Magnus carefully nestles the phone back in its cradle and tiptoes back to bed next to Julia, Taako’s eyes are closed, feigning sleep.

The world is tumbling down around them.

He figures that his date with Kravitz to the Chug'n Squeeze, planned for next Friday, probably isn’t gonna happen.


	2. Julia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elastigirl rides.

When there’s a knock at their hotel room door, late at night, Julia and Magnus meet eyes.  She rises to her feet, and he follows her as she pops open the door, the chain preventing it from opening more than a few inches.

There’s a real pasty white dude standing outside, dressed in blue jeans.

“Oh, Barry!” Julia says, surprised, and closes the door so she can undo the chain, and then lets him in.  “What... what’re you doing here?”

He shrugged sleepily, pushing the door shut behind him.  “So, um, I was out, uh, superheroeing, you know?”

“We knew,” Julia agrees.

“Well, I, uh, I got approached by these two guys.  Gave me a, a message. For you.”

“Alright then,” she shrugs, moving to the side so Barry can come further into their hotel rooms.  He settles down at the tiny kitchen table, and soon enough they’re joined by Lup and Davenport. (From the bathroom, Taako shouts, “My face mask’s almost done!”).

“Start without him,” Lup suggests, lounging against Barry’s side.  He blushes.

“I, I, um,” Barry manages, and Julia shoots Lup a  _ look _ .  Touching and flirting is casual for Lup, but it’s not doing anything for Barry’s ability to talk.

She shoots a  _ look  _ right back at Julia, and if anything, leans in closer.

“Um, a guy named, uh, named Merle Highchurch,” Barry stutters.  “You’ve, uh, probably seen some of his stuff. He’s a real, real crunchy guy from what I, I’ve heard, but he’s a businessman.  He and his, um, design partner John have, uh, a proposal for you.”

“And what might it be, Barold?” Lup asks.

He blushes again, takes off his glasses and polishes them furiously on the edge of his sleeve.  “They want to, um, to send superheroes on secret missions and, and film them. So that, er, the public likes us again.”

“ _ Sick _ ,” Lup breathes, sitting upright.  “Can I--”

“Sorry,” Barry says.  “They want, um, they want Julia.”

Everybody looks at Julia.  There’s an awkward silence.

Across the hotel suite, the bathroom door bangs open, and Taako struts out.  “What’s up, nerds?”

They all look at him.

“Looks like I’m going to be a... propaganda superhero,” Julia says slowly, tasting the words in her mouth.

“Fuck yeah!” says Magnus, grinning big.  “You’re gonna kick  _ all _ the bad guy’s asses!”  He turns the Barry, eager.  “Can the rest of us help her?”

Barry shakes his head.  “Sorry, Mags, uh, Highchurch just wants Julia.  Says she’s the least destructive out of, um, all of you.”

“Hey!” Lup protests.  They all look at her, and she looks down.  “Okay, that’s fair, I guess.”

Julia kicks her under the table, and smiles at her.  Of course Lup wants this, but she’s also got a talent for leaving things on fire behind her.  Which is weird because fire isn’t even her superpower-- more of a somewhat illegal hobby.

“Why not Dadn’port?” Taako asks, flopping down on his stomach on the pull-out bed because they’re out of chairs in the kitchenette.

“I, uh--”

“I’m not as pretty as Julia,” Davenport replies with a shrug.  “It’s the tactical thing to do, really. She’s the safest, usually, and she’s the best at playing to a crowd-- no, Taako,” he interjects, for Taako is gaping at him-- “At playing to a crowd in a  _ nice  _ way.”

“He’s got a point,” Lup says.  Taako sticks his tongue out at her.

“So, when do I go meet with this Merle person?” Julia asks Barry.

“As soon as possible?”

“Love you, Jules,” says her husband, giving her a hug as she leaves.

“Love you too, Mags,” she replies.  There’s a finality about the goodbye that she hates.

\---

Silent guards lead Julia down a tree-lined walk, planked in thin wood.  For all that this Highchurch fellow is supposed to be a billionaire businessman, he’s pretty crunchy.

Emerging out of the woods in front of her, suddenly, rises a...house isn’t quite the word for it.

It’s like a treehouse on steroids.  Perched high-up in the branches of a tree she can’t quite tell is real or not, a foliage-encrusted building rises.  It drips and droops along with the moss hanging off the tree.

She wonders, briefly, how much money Highchurch had to pay for it.  She wonders if, since he’s willing to throw so much away on his little treehouse, if he’s actually going to make good on his promise.  To fund her doing badass superhero shit, to film it, to make the world love them again.

To let them be heroes again.

Julia rides the elevator up the middle of the tree trunk alone.  She stares out the glass front, occasionally catching glimpses of the “forest” outsides (that’s actually just the foothills of the fancy Faerun town Highchurch lives in).  She fiddles with her old uniform.

She rejected five different offers from Lup and Taako to dress her, to do her hair, to prep her makeup.  And although she’s dressed in one of Lucretia’s finest supersuits, Julia feels almost naked. Unprotected.

As the elevator rises higher and higher, Julia readjusts her mask, making sure it’s firmly plastered to her face.  It’s red, and stands out brilliantly against her dark skin. Itching to do something, she checks that her dreads are in place, and reapplies the chapstick that somebody (probably Lup, she does sensible things like bring chapstick with her) slipped into her front pocket.

_ Ding _ !

The fancy wood-panelled doors of the elevator slide open.  Julia thrusts her shoulders back, chin up. Looking every inch the superhero.

“Hi,” says Highchurch, sitting in the middle of what’s pretty much a greenhouse, wearing cargo shorts and a god-awful Hawaiian shirt.  He waves at her with his prosthetic arm, only pausing to pluck a stray leaf off it’s tip. 

“Hello,” Julia replies cautiously, striding forward.  Confidence. Poise.

Everything a superhero should be.

“Elastigirl, huh?” he asks, and she nods.  “Please, call me Merle. And c’mon, sit down!”

She winds her way through his rows and rows of twisting potted plants and snaking vines, a little impressed by the elaborate lighting and watering systems each of them has.  Looks like those billions of dollars had to go  _ somewhere _ .  After a close call involving a loose floorboard and a cactus-- saved by Julia’s excellent superpower and also reflexes-- she joins Merle in the vague center of his greenhouse, sitting on some hemp pouf.  

“So, welcome to Merlegaritaville!” he says, raising his hands in the air.

Julia nods politely, looking around.  The rooms’ ringed in glass windows, some wooden-walled column rising through the middle.  It’s pretty, alright.

_ Ding _ ! Goes the elevator.

“Aw, there ya are, John!” says Merle, once again waving cheerily.

Out of the elevator steps a tall man, wearing possibly the most expensive tailored suit Julia’s ever seen, his arms full of carefully rolled scrolls of paper.  “I’m so sorry that I’m late, Merle. Hello, Elastigirl!”

He piles his papers onto a bush (Julia’s not sure if it’s a bush that’s supposed to have stuff on it or if it’s just, like, some random bush) and steps quickly through the maze of Merle’s planting endeavors to join them in the center.

“We are  _ huge  _ fans of your work,” says John, after they’re introduced and handshakes are exchanged all around.  “And, with the resources that PanTech has at its disposal, we’re now in the position to offer you...

“A gig!” Merle interrupts, excited, absentmindedly watering a geranium.

“A gig?” Julia asks.  “What  _ kind  _ of gig, exactly?”

She heard Barry’s stuttering explanation, yes, but she wants it direct from the source.

“What was the main reason supers were forced underground?” asks John.

“...stupidity?”

He smiles.  “ _ Perception _ .  The people only see what the government and their news crews  _ want  _ them to see.  They don’t see it like you do, Elastigirl!  They didn’t see you yesterday, choosing to save the people in the parking lot instead of saving the bank.  They didn’t see how difficult it was!”

“...thanks?” Julia says.

“What he’s sayin’,” says Merle, “Is that we gotta change how people see ya!  We gotta  _ change  _ their  _ perceptions _ !”

“And how do we do that?”

John smiles again, somehow managing to make sitting on some hemp-rope cushion seem poised.  “We insert hidden cameras into your supersuit. We’ve got connections worldwide, and Elastigirl, all we need is  _ you _ .  The most camera ready!  The smartest! The bravest!”

“I’m gonna have to disagree with you there,” she says as politely as she can, because Taako’s a million times prettier than she is, and Lup’s so much smarter, and anybody who’s seen Davenport and Magnus fight know that she’s not the brave one--

“Don’t,” Merle suggests, smiling.  There’s a flower tucked into his beard.  Julia can’t tell if it’s there on purpose or not.  “John did a cost-benefit analysis, and if nothin’ else, you’re the best there.  People aren’t gonna like ya if you’re out there smashin’ up banks  _ every  _ time!”

And... that’s fair.  Out of all of them, she’s probably got the least destructive superpower.

“You can help us make supers legal again,” says John.  “Your family can come out of hiding, Elastigirl. You can be loved.  Adored. Everything can be just like it was.”

Julia meets his eyes, and then Merle’s.  “Let’s do this.”

\---

The house is  _ huge _ .  Taako’s eyes light up like lanterns when they step inside, and Julia figures that it’s probably worth it.

“Are you gonna be okay here?” she asks Magnus the morning of, as she’s suiting up for her first mission being filmed to make supers legal again.  It’s a good cause-- maybe the best cause, at least for now-- but still, she doesn’t like being parted.

“Oh yeah,” he says, confident.  “We got this!”

“You’ll remember to feed Steven?  And Johann?”

He looks offended, but then smiles.  “Of course! And I’ll wake Taako and Lup up by eight and I’ll make sure they’ve got their homework before they catch the bus to college, and I’ll make sure Dav doesn’t fly for too long and--”

She kisses him on the cheek, next to his sideburns.  “You got this, babe.”

“Fuck yeah.  Go show ‘em how it’s done, Jules.”  They go through their seventeen-step secret handshake, and Julia hops onto her fucking  _ radical  _ new Elasticycle, and breezes out of the house.

The secret exits are weird, sure, but they’re a hell of a dramatic effect.

A convertible full of college students  _ recognizes  _ her as she speeds along the freeway.  Julia isn’t a vain woman, but she does like the attention.  It’s... it’s just  _ nice _ .  After so many years of hiding behind first the Waxmen name and then Burnsides, moving jobs between carpentry and office work and blacksmithing and everything in between, well...

It’s freeing.

\---

She hangs out in some gross alleyway for a good part of the morning, systematically working her way through the police scanners.  Before the island and Syndrome, she and Magnus used to go “bowling” and do the same thing. (Barry was more than happy to make sure nobody-- i.e., Lup-- burnt down the house.)

“Anything yet, Elastigirl?” says John through her comms.

“Nothing yet,” she murmurs, switching to the next channel.  “Hang on, I think I’m getting something. Something about the Rockport Limited’s opening ceremony?”

There’s a clatter of a keyboard from John’s end.  

“Disruption or threat?” asks Merle.

“Both,” John tells them, and tells Julia where the station is.  She doesn’t wait for him to finish the instructions-- already racing around the corner and through Rockport.  She dodges cars and stretches to slingshot herself along rooftops. 

She zooms up, leaving skid marks behind, as the Rockport Limited-- the finest levitating train of their day-- takes off, chock-full of important people, including a foreign Ambassador who’s very involved in superhero rights.  It goes, but then-- it stops.

And, first slowly, but then fast fast faster, it reverses.  Going  _ backwards _ .

“How much track is there?!” Julia shouts onto her comms, jumping her bike onto the rails and zooming after the runaway train.

“About twenty-five miles,” says John, sounding a little nervous.

But Julia’s not scared.  She’s so far beyond scared.

All Julia is, is  _ there _ .  The handlebars and gears solid beneath her fingers.  Mask cool against her cheeks. Wind in her dreads and fierce grin on her face.

And then her phone rings, interrupting her comms.

“Hello?!” Julia shouts into the wind.

“Hey, Jules,” says Lup, lazily.  “Got a moment?”

“Not really,” she bites out, leaping her motorbike to the roof of the train.  She’s gotta get to the person controlling this whole thing. This will  _ not  _ be a tragedy-- not with Julia on guard.

“Darn,” Lup says.  “I was wondering if you’d want to come join me for lunch today.  That cute little cafe we like-- Ravens’ Roost-- is having a lunch special.  Two for one, babe!”

Julia flings herself to the roof of the train.  Behind her, the Elasticycle flies backwards off the train, but she is not killed as the Rockport Limited zooms through a tunnel.  “Can I call you back?”

“Yeah, sure,” she replies, and there’s a quiet beep as Lup hangs up.

“You’ve only got two miles of track left,” John warns as her comms unit reconnects.

There’s no time to catch the train like Magnus would do, to fly up front like Davenport or freeze it like Barry.  She can’t race it to the end of the track like Lup, or even put a shielding bubble around it like Taako would.

But Julia’s not one of the best superheroes-- strike that, according to Merle and John, she’s  _ the  _ best-- of her time for nothing.  She reaches down and grips the edge of the train, trying to dig her fingers into the metal casing.

And, hands and feet straining to stay connected, Julia lets her body stretch and puff out like a parachute.  She grits her teeth-- wind barreling against every inch of her-- but the train slows, screeching.

The Rockport Limited slows-- blasts through one safety barrier, and then another, and dangles off the edge-- but then, the Rockport Limited  _ stops _ .

Julia exhales in relief, reforming back to her usual body, but it’s not over yet.  She pops open the door into the passenger car, hands raised and balled in fists, ready to punch and kick and fight her way up to the driver.

But... there’s nobody to fight.  All the very important passengers are just... asleep.

“Hello?” Julia asks nervously, walking and then jogging through the cars.  “Hello? Anybody?” By the time she reaches the next compartment, Julia is sprinting past the sleeping people.  

The driver does not look up at her as she bursts into his compartment.  She grabs his face, turns it towards her, and it’s only her years of hero training that stops her from jumping away in almost horror.

His  _ eyes  _ are covered with goggles.  Goggles that are filled with a black goo, like tar, only sprinkled with rainbows.  As she looks down at him in horror, a white eye-- like a chalk drawing-- blinks open on each of the goggles.

She risks a look down at his console.  The screen there is completely filled with the same horrible black tar.

Julia’s not Magnus, but she’s also very good at punching.  She slams her fist into the screen without looking at it-- it made her head feel like static-- until it shatters and the goop inside disappears.

“Who  _ are  _ you?” she hisses to the driver.

The white eyes superimposed on his black-tar ones blink shut.  Like a million voices all at once, dissonant and chilling, the driver says, “ _ The Hunger _ .”

She reaches out almost instinctively and rips the goggles off his face, throwing them to the ground, and hears them shatter.

And suddenly Julia is holding onto an unconscious man in goggles, no trace of this... this  _ Hunger  _ remaining.

She gets the feeling that nothing is quite as simple as it seems.

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos make my day!! If you liked reading this, please give me some feedback! :D


	3. Magnus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mr. Incredible fears.

If he and Jules ever have kids, honestly, Magnus would probably enjoy staying home with them more than he would enjoy going to work.  But really? Handing the combined chaotic forces of Taako, Lup, and Davenport-- plus one goldfish, one scottish deerhound, and more than a dozen secret passages-- is another bag of beans altogether.

But he’s doing his best!

He wakes the Taaco twins up at eight fifteen, which considering their track record, is _very_ early.  He packs paper sack lunches for them, and Lup is nice enough to take them.  She takes Taako’s too, because he insists that he’s “too old for that kinda thing” and also “what the fuck, Mags, we’re the same age, don’t parent us.”

Lup just winks at him.  “He’ll eat it at some point.  Seeya, big guy!”

They shoot finger guns at each other as the twins race out the door, down the very long driveway, and to the bus stop where the city bus comes every morning at nine oh four.  (Magnus checked the bus schedule the night before.)

He knows their plans inside and out.  The twins at school, Taako’s got a date tonight or somethin’ (that wasn’t on the schedule, but Taako’s wearing more makeup than usual, and Magnus has lived with him long enough to see the signs), Lup’s meeting up with Barry to try and figure out how his icy superpowers work.  In other words, she’s trying to figure out how to give herself fire superpowers.

Well, opposites attract.

Johann has a vet appointment at two-thirty _sharp_.  And Davenport is...

“What’re you doin’ today, Capn’port?” he asks the other man over a breakfast of slightly burnt eggs.  The twins didn’t cook, and it shows.

Davenport shrugs, applying a liberal amount of hot sauce to his eggs.  “I’ve got a new idea for a gadget to use while I’m flying. Laser eyes.”

“That sounds _sick_ ,” says Magnus around a mouthful of breakfast burrito.  “Like, red lasers or green lasers? Because you gotta go green, y’know, so you’re one of the good guys?”

“This isn’t fantasy Star Wars.”

“Well, it _should_ be,” he retorts, and Davenport laughs.  “C’mon, I bet you could make a lightsaber.”

“Oh, I could,” he agrees.  “But would I?”

“Probably?”

“Yeah, I would,” he replies with a bit of a laugh.  “But I would _not_ leave it anywhere you could find it.”

Magnus pouts.  Davenport flings a bit of hot sauce at him-- missing, and splattering the floor.  Then, they go on a very short superhero mission to save Johann the dog from the horrors of the ghost pepper hot sauce.  

One pan of spilled eggs, two accidental turn ons of the waterfalls, and one time where the sofa falls into a moat later, the crisis is averted.

\---

He comes back from the routine vet visit with a perfect bill of health for Johann.  Setting down the deerhound on the fancy floor of the house Merle gave them, Magnus smiles, and hangs up his keys by the doorway.

“Hey, Capn’port!” he calls, voice echoing through the cavernous room.

No response.  That’s a little unsettling, but also one time Davenport and Barry accidentally worked on one of his flight gadgets for forty-one hours straight without realizing it.

“Hello-oooo?” Magnus shouts, shuffling further into the house.  He should probably make dinner. Or, he should set the table, because Taako and Lup are sure to mock his (absent) cooking abilities once they get home.

Still, nothing.

“Capn’port?  Uh, Davenport?”

Okay, Magnus is getting worried now.  On the broad kitchen table, he finds a pair of pliers and some complicated gadget thing that he’s afraid to touch.  There’s a small vial of inky black liquid, that looks like the kind of muck a really gross jellyfish tank might be full of.  It’s missing it’s cap, and has begun to pool across the table.

Magnus frowns.  That’s not good.  Careful to not touch the liquid, he rights the tiny bottle.  “Davenport? Where are you?”

“D-D-Davenport!”

“Johann?” asks Magnus, turning to his dog in shock.

“I- I’m Davenport!”

No, the voice is not coming from the dog.  But then where--

Feeling silly, Magnus tilts his head backwards.  

“Davenport,” repeats the captain, from the ceiling.

“Um,” Magnus says, petting Johann’s head absently.  “Capn’port? You good up there?”

“Davenport,” he repeats, and then more urgently.  “Davenport!”

This is so not good.  Magnus swears under his breath.  “Are you stuck up there?” There’s been problems with Dav’s superpower before, of course-- it can be unpredictable, and sometimes he gets stuck flying, but--

“Davenport!  D-Davenport!”

But there’s been nothing before like this.

“Uh, one Davenport for yes, two for no.  Are you stuck?”

“Davenport!”

“Um... I guess I should get a ladder,” Magnus says, staring up at the high ceilings.  

“Dav- Davenport!”

“Keep an eye on him,” he instructs Johann the dog, and hurries off to the garage to try and find a ladder tall enough to reach to the ceiling so he can get Davenport down.

\---

With only minor bruising and one chair falling apart, Magnus has Davenport down off the ceiling, but he’s still, well... something is obviously, clearly wrong.  He can’t stop flying, and it’s not like he can hover. He’s like... a helium balloon, rising up and up and up. Magnus does not let go of his ankle.

He’s not about to lose his quasi-dad.  Not like this.

Lup and Taako’s phones go to voicemail.  Julia answers, but all he can hear is tires screeching, and he figures she’s probably busy.  Barry, as he figured the man would, lets the phone ring out and go to voicemail.

So, his immediate family isn’t there to help him figure out how to help Dav.  But that doesn’t mean Magnus doesn’t care about other people.

And besides his wife, he’s on speed dial for the smartest woman in Faerun that he knows.  

Lucretia picks up the phone before the first ring is finished.  “Why, hello Magnus,” she says, tone carefully polite, guarded. “Can I help you?”

“Something’s wrong with Dav,” he says, and he can hear the fear in his voice.  “He... I was taking Johann-- the dog, not the musician-- to the vet, and I came back, and I think something went wrong with his experiment and--”

“Magnus.  Everything will be okay,” says Lucretia, dripping with gravitas and assurance.  “Bring his experiment with you. Get over here as quickly as you can.  Lucretia out.”

There’s a click as she hangs up the phone.  

Magnus clumsily scoops all of Davenport’s stuff on the table into a plastic bag, one hand holding onto the babbling Davenport’s ankle so he doesn’t rise to the ceiling again.  He’s careful not to touch the murky liquid.

Traffic isn’t bad, or at least, Magnus doesn’t think it is.  Maybe he just broke a million speed laws. But it’s okay, because he didn’t get pulled over.

Lucretia’s first set of gates peels apart, and then he scans in his hand and eye and voice to pass through the next one.  “Mr. Incredible,” he enunciates, each syllable crisp.

The laser gates aren’t open all the way before he’s speeding to the top of the hill where Lucretia lives.  Right now, something’s wrong with Davenport, and there’s nothing more important to Magnus than the people he loves.

\---

Lucretia is a competent woman, and for that Magnus is very grateful.  She sets up Davenport in a room where he won’t float away, takes the bag of jumbled-together experiment supplies, and disappears into her lab.  Every few minutes, he hears her calling for her assistants, a mother and son named Maureen and Lucas respectively, to grab her the pliers or voltmeter or electricoganza, or other such foreign sounding things.

That’s not Magnus’s wheelhouse, not at all.  Lucretia makes groundbreaking technology and puts it into supersuits, and now he is praying that she will be able to work her magic once again and help Davenport.

For his part, Magnus sits with Davenport.  He tells him all about his adventures as Mr. Incredible, and how he met Julia as they pursued the same thief across the rooftops of Neverwinter, and how they _actually_ met the Taaco twins.

(It’s a story that varies with every telling.  For this one, Magnus drags it out, dramatizing every moment.  He makes up a story of love and hope and family. With Davenport only able to say his name, and Julia off saving the world, it is exactly the story that Magnus needs to hear.)

“I’ve got a prototype,” Lucretia tells them four hours later when she comes back to the sitting room, her white hair pulled back into a bun and mascara smeared under one eye.  “C’mon, you two.”

As they walk, she explains.  “Somehow, Davenport got a sample of one of the Superhero Relocation Program’s most dangerous items-- Ichor.  In short, it is a memory erasure device. It’s what they give to people who have been exposed to superheroes.”

“And he... he lost his _memory_?”

Lucretia nodded, gravely.  “Well, in a sense. The Ichor targets very specific memories, namely, what the subject is currently thinking about.  If Davenport lost his memory while working on a technological experiment, to do with his superpower, in the home he shared with his family...”

“You’re saying he forgot all of that?” Magnus breathes, horrified.

She closes her eyes.  “I’m not saying it's irreversible.  And we’ve got some ideas. Davenport can stay with us for the night, Magnus.  He’s going to be okay. We’ll figure it out.”

They’re going to figure it out, he tries to reassure himself.  They’ve got to.

The car ride back to the house is slower, and even though nobody talked on the way there, it’s a thousand times more quiet.

Mr. Incredible doesn’t leave people behind, but apparently Magnus does.  He didn’t just leave behind the Starblaster-- he left behind Davenport. His _dad_.  And even though he trusts Lucretia with his life and more, it still feels like a betrayal.

\---


	4. Julia Reprise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elastigirl wins, and loses.

The Hunger is everywhere she looks.  Working together with Merle and John, Julia tries to track them down over and over again.

“I’ve got them for sure this time,” says John the next time he calls her up.  “Can you be on the move in five?”

“Yeah,” she replies, fiting her mask to her face and hurrying out of her hotel room.  Her elasticycle got wrecked saving the Rockport Limited, but she’s plenty fast on her feet.  Julia follows John’s comms instructions through the streets of Neverwinter, ignoring wide-eyed looks and hushed “Is that  _ Elastigirl _ ?” from the people on the roads.

“I’m gonna send you the tracker,” he says, voice staticky.  “Bad conne--”

His voice fizzes out, but now Julia’s got the tracker.  She can hunt down the Hunger on her own, and damn it if she won’t get them this time.  Her steps are sure: she’s got a supervillian to catch.

The apartment building is pretty sketchy, to be sure.  Julia slinks her way up the stairwell, and follows the tracker to the apartment on the highest floor, the furthest from the stairs.  She presses her ear against the metal door with three locks on it.

No sound from inside.  Moving slowly, more carefully than she can remember doing, she snakes one arm underneath the door, bending upwards to unlock each of the three deadbolts.

Click.  Click. Click.  She presses down the handle, and eases herself inside.

It’s like a warehouse in there, dark and full of heavy metal shelving.  Tiptoeing through, Julia grabs a heavy metal hammer from a desk covered with blueprints of the Rockport Limited.  If all else fails, she can bash in the Hunger with the hammer. Blacksmith training coming in useful, she supposes.

It’s like a maze, like a spiral.  Like a whirlpool. Pulling her in towards the center, closer and closer to the middle, to the beginning.

To the Hunger-- to stopping the person who almost destroyed the Rockport Limited.

The winding path ends at a covered panel.  Julia grits her teeth, makes sure her mask is secure, and hefts her hammer.  This ends  _ now _ .

She slams the hammer into the panel, and it falls in a series of sparks.

\---

Walls, covered in inky black tar, rainbow-speckled.  Walls that look like they’re oozing, like the goggles over the eyes of the driver. 

Slam!

Julia leaps forward, swinging the hammer.  

Miss.  Dodge. Lashes out a leg, stretching far, and connects with a person.

A lamp, swinging towards her head.  Barely misses: slams against the wall, and it falls out and backwards.

Julia’s punch, connecting.  Electricity coursing through her veins and the distant sound of her own screams.

She’s not gonna go down like this.  Not this easy, not this alone.

Julia’s scream becomes fierce, feral, as she pursues the Hunger through their apartment.  

She’s a competent woman, and the Hunger is no match for her.  She rips the mask off of their face, knocks them out, handcuffs them.  Fireman carries them down the stairs and straight into a police car.

Bloody and bruised, Julia carefully puts a hand to her face and makes sure her mask is still secure.  A million cameras are pointed her direction, click click clicking her victory for all the world to see.  She straightens her back-- ribs twinging in protest-- and raises her chin, smiling strong and proud.

Just like the comic books.

And then Julia stretches and springs her way up to the rooftops and through Neverwinter back to Merle’s treehouse.  She’s pretty sure she broke something, and the billionaire businessman gardener is  _ also  _ a well-trained doctor.  That is, when he remembers.  After one failed mission he sent her to the ER, and only John’s laughing reminder kept Julia there.

But Merle isn’t there when Julia rides the elevator up to his treehouse, one hand keeping careful pressure on her arm.  It might just be sore. She hopes it’s just sore-- overexertion, maybe, or overstretching.

“You did it!” John cheers, welcoming her into the treehouse, offering a glass of wine.  Fuck yeah, Julia needs it. She takes it gratefully. “You got the Hunger! Julia,  _ everybody’s  _ talking about it!”  He points at a bank of monitors in the room in the middle of the treehouse.  Each is open to a newscast, featuring various attractive men and women and nonbinary folk each detailing Elastigirl’s victory over the Hunger.

The guy she arrested already has a mugshot, and a name attached to him.  Julia sighs a little bit, staring at it.

“What?” asks John.

“I just... I dunno,” she says with a shrug.  “I just expected the Hunger to be more than a pizza delivery guy.  Seriously, the name ‘Greg Grimaldis’ doesn’t really strike me as a villain wannabe, y’know?”

John shrugs, perching on the edge of a chair and sipping at his glass of wine.  “I guess the best villians are the ones who hide in plain sight. Like a pizza delivery guy.”

Julia sits down, leaning closer to the bank of monitors.  One of her hands traces along Greg’s name. “It was just...”

“Hm?”

She looks over at John.  “It was just so  _ easy _ .  This guy almost crashed the Rockport Limited-- I mean, the Hunger can enslave anybody through a screen!  You’d think he would’ve been harder to defeat.”

“You’re hurt,” says John suddenly, nodding towards Julia’s sore arm.  She glances down at it-- there’s a bit of blood.

“Oh.”  She takes a sip of wine.

“C’mon, Merle’s out but I know where he keeps his emergency medical kit.”

Julia follows John through Merle’s greenhouse.  Yeah, a bandage and maybe some pain meds would be great right about now.

But she can’t stop thinking about the Hunger.  About the walls that encased Greg Grimaldis in his bank of computers with his Hunger mask on... 

She can’t stop thinking about how the Hunger works.  You see it, is how John explained it to her. And if you look for too long, and the Hunger has put his specialized goggles on you, it basically takes over your free will.

_ Goggles _ .

John takes the medical kit off the wall, sets it on the floor, and kneels down to dig through it for a bandage.  “Sorry,” he apologizes, “This is a mess. Anyway, we’re having a party tonight to celebrate the arrest of the Hunger.  You can be there, right?”

Julia shakes away her doubts.  “Yeah, of course!”

\---

Merle’s treehouse is weird, when all his plants are moved to the edges of the room and replaced with a group of people dressed in finery, eating finger foods.  Merle himself is surprisingly comfortable among them-- she hadn’t expected a guy who casually wears cargo shorts to look good in a tuxedo, or to be actually really good at karaoke.  (He must have, like, two  _ thousand  _ party points.)

Besides all the super fancy people there, there’s a handful of superheroes.  

“It’s nice to meet you,” says one superpowered woman with blue tattoos and a suit that has a splintering lightning bolt down the front.  “I’m Dragon, and it’s kinda a misnomer-- look.” Dragon makes a warp on the air, tosses her champagne glass through, and opens another warp by her other hand.  Catches it again and takes a sip. “Oh! This is my wife--”

“Orc,” says her wife, smiling at Julia.  She doesn’t need an explanation of what Orc’s superpower is-- the woman is beefier than Magnus, and he’s built like a brick shithouse.

At some point in the night, she meets Aviator and Music Man, drinking and droopy respectively.

But by  _ far  _ Julia’s favorite superhero is an easy choice.  He’s tiny-- no older than ten, tops, and the first thing he says to her is, “Hello, ma’am!  My name is Detective and I really am very thankful for all the work you’ve done to let us superheroes be legal again!”

The kid steals Julia’s heart just like that.

But, god, who let a  _ kid _ go out and fight crime?  When she tries to ask Detective more about that, he just avoids the subject, and then excuses himself to go get a glass of milk (“because underage drinking is illegal!”).

The night is waning when Merle stands to make a speech, John at his side, and Julia hovering kind of awkwardly behind them.  This social scene was never her jam.

So she mostly tunes it out as Merle speaks, only catching bits and pieces.  How proud they are of Julia for saving their community from the horrors of the Hunger.  How superheroes have been maligned for too long for all the good that they do.

How he and John are going to host a meeting on their yacht, the Wavesmasher, of diplomats who will be signing superheroes back into legality.

With that, the crowd cheers, and Julia can’t help let out a whoop of her own.  All the pain and the hurt and the struggles and the time away from her family, well-- it’s been  _ worth it _ .  They’re going to be legal again.  She and Magnus are going to be able to fight crime just like they used to do.

Taako and Lup will be able to use their powers to their fullest extent.  Julia’s always in awe of how smart they are-- she’s sure there’s a million things to do with invisibility and shield spells, and really fucking fast running, than the obvious.  And if anybody’s gonna figure out another option, it’s the twins.

And Davenport!  Davenport will be able to fly free, in the sky.  No roof to hold him back. 

(One drunken night, he’d confided in her that he became a fighter pilot for that same reason.  And that, every time he flies using his superpower, he just wants to go  _ up  _ and  _ up  _ and  _ up _ into the great blue and black beyond and never come down.)

“A trophy!” John is saying, and presents Julia with the Hunger’s horrible, robotic mask.  She holds it up like a severed head, and the assembled crowd cheers. As soon as Julia can, she retreats into the main room.  

She’s fine in crowds-- hell, Julia loves being in  _ charge  _ of crowds-- but honestly she’s kind of overwhelmed.  It’s been a long-ass day.

She perches in one of the rolling chairs by John’s bank of monitors, swivels it idly.  Looks down at the mask (“A trophy!”) in her hands. 

_ Goggles _ .

Why is she thinking about that, why now?  Why now, when everything has turned out well, just when she’s fought for and  _ won  _ her happy ending--

One of her hands slips inside the mask, feeling around--

And Julia pulls out a pair of goggles.

Just like the ones the driver of the Rockport Limited had been wearing when the Hunger took over his mind.

Just like the one’s she’s been chasing all over Neverwinter in desperate pursuit of the Hunger.

_ Did she arrest the right person _ ?

Julia’s brow is furrowed, and she turns to John, displaying the goggles.  “Hey, d’you think...”

He moves too quick for her to dodge or fight back.  In one fluid gesture, John slams the goggles out of Julia’s hands and onto her face, over her superhero mask.  For a moment, Julia resists-- teeth gritted, hands balled into fists, desperate-- but then she does not.  _ Cannot _ .

Black Hunger goo fills up her vision like she’s drowning.  It oozes, dark, but reflects a million colors back to her. 

It is horrifying.

But it is also comforting, and she feels her entire body relax, and turn to John.  “What would you like me to do?”

\---

  
  



	5. Magnus Reprise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mr. Incredible does his best.

Thankfully, the next day is Saturday.  Magnus wakes up early and takes Johann the dog for a run, winding their way through the foothills of Neverwinter.  It’s cool and shady, and they run for a long time. It feels good, being in shape. Being outside and going and moving and being.

He doesn’t resent Julia for being chosen as the superhero poster child.  Hell, if you asked him, he’d choose her too! She’s  _ amazing _ .

But Magnus will admit that he misses the action.  He  _ likes  _ the feeling of justice, up close and personal.  He’s never liked government, per se-- it takes so long to get anything done!-- so he loves how he gets to take it into his own hands when he’s Mr. Incredible.

Magnus is a protector at heart, and he’s the same with his mask on.  He does damage to buildings and structures and bad guys, but in the end, he always rushes in to save people.

Julia’s doing a great job of saving people without him, though.  She’s saving  _ them _ \-- she’s saving supers everywhere.

Magnus and Johann trot back up to their house as the sun rises over the distant mountains of the Teeth.  It’s Julia’s turn to save them, and it’s Magnus’s job to support her.

\---

Nobody is awake inside, which isn’t exactly unusual.  Davenport is still with Lucretia, and besides Magnus and Julia, he’s the first in their household to wake up.  When the twins are allowed to, he’s seen them sleep well past noon.

He showers, and gets ready for the day.  It’s a very short process with the notable exception of his sideburns-- proper grooming involves ten minutes apiece, and Julia teasing him about them.

Julia isn’t there to tease him, so he doesn’t bother with his sideburns.  Just brushes them down and trots down the very modern staircase to the kitchen.  The twins aren’t up, so he gets to make his favorite food: meat lover smoothie.

Taako and Lup insist that it’s “not a real thing” and that “bacon and sausage and ham in a blender is gross” and that he’s an “affront to all things culinary and banned from the kitchen until forever.”

But since they’re not awake, Magnus is free to thoroughly enjoy himself.  He fills up Johann’s food bowl, and refills the water, and sneaks him little bits of the meat lover smoothie.

But Magnus isn’t still for long-- it’s simply not in his nature.  He spends maybe an hour or so messing around with the secret passageways and buttons that turn on the waterfalls and open the floor and drop the sofa.  There’s a couple times he gets soaked, but that’s okay! He’s got nothing better to do, and now he’s pretty sure that it was an hour well spent.

Magnus carves a duck that looks like Julia in her supersuit, and then gets a little carried away and carves all of the Incredibles.  He’s very proud that Lup’s duck looks a little blurry with her superspeed, even though he couldn’t get Davenport’s duck to fly.

It’s a little past noon when he hears the twins wake up.  A few minutes later, Lup trots down the stairs in cut-off shorts and a t-shirt, raking her fingers through her short hair.  She shoots Magnus finger guns. 

“How’s it hangin’, Mags?”

“Good!”  He shows her the duck he carved to look like her.  Lup grins, showing off her gap-toothed smile, and holds it right up to her face.

“I love it,” she proclaims.  “I gotta get Taako to come see his  _ right now _ .  You go find Dav, I bet he’s cracked the secret behind levitation already and is just holdin’ out on the rest of us.”

Lup dashes right back upstairs, her superspeed making her a blur of movement, leaving Magnus holding the ducks at the kitchen table.  Heart sinking-- how is he to explain to Lup and Taako what happened to Davenport?

“FUCK OFF!” shouts Taako from upstairs.

“NO!” Lup screams back.

Magnus runs his thumb over the bill of the duck that looks like Elastigirl, like Julia.  He rises, slowly, and cleans up the wood shavings, and does his best to tune out the twin fight that’s rapidly developing up the stairs.

\---

“This fucking sucks!” Taako shouts, sliding down the banister.  Lup runs beside him, slower than usual, but every now and then she blurs out of focus.  Taako is clutching something in one of his hands. “I  _ hate  _ this!”

“What’s wrong?” Magnus asks, watching them speed past him and into the kitchen.

“Taako, seriously--” Lup begins, but he just glares at her.

Holding one hand out, he flings a wad of fabric-- oh, shit, it’s his  _ supersuit _ \-- into the sink.  Keeping angry eye contact with his sister, Taako flicks the disposal switch.  “I fucking  _ hate  _ this!  I don’t  _ want  _ to be a superhero!  If you chucklefucks weren’t so lawful good all the fucking time I wouldn’t be dragged into this goddamn shit pile!”

Lup stares at Taako, one eyebrow raised, supremely unimpressed.  She glances down at his supersuit, which has not actually been shredded-- instead, it’s just being tossed around like it’s on a trampoline.  She flicks off the disposal. “Are you done being a piss baby?”

He snatches his supersuit back, and flings it on the floor.  “Fuck off, Lup!”

She kicks it at him.  “You’re being overdramatic, Koko.  Seriously. It’s just him being a dick.”

“Yeah, and if I didn’t have this goddamn fucking  _ superpower _ , maybe he’d’ve actually showed up!”

“Uh...” says Magnus slowly.  Both twins look at him, heads turning in sharp unison, threatening.  “What’s going on?”

Taako sighs, but seems to be over his anger.  Well, his “yelling and shouty anger.” Magnus has known him long enough to know that he bundles it up inside for a very long time.

Lup puts the heels of her hands on the fancy countertop, and boosts herself up to perch on the edge.  “C’mon, Koko, let’s make pancakes and complain.”

“Make me do everything in this house, I swear,” Taako mutters as he pulls out a thing of flour and a carton of eggs.  Lup finds a griddle, fires it up.

“I’m still confused,” says Magnus.

“Was supposed to have a date last night,” says Taako without looking at him.  “But the guy saw me at the cooking competition. In my fuckin’ supersuit, but without my mask on.  And I guess he just fuckin’ ghosted me or whatever, I guess. After  _ you _ \--” he turns to Magnus, pokes a manicured finger into his chest-- “Fuckin’ snitched on me to Fisher.”

Magnus’s eyes go wide.  “I, um...”

Taako turns back to the pancakes he and Lup are whipping up.  “It’s fine. Taako’s good out here. If he’s afraid of a little superpower, I wasn’t interested  _ anyway _ .”

“Hell yeah, bro,” Lup says encouragingly, and tosses him the oil.  He catches it behind is back without looking at him.

“So where’s Dadn’port?” Taako asks, pouring out the pancakes with the air of a man desperately trying to change the topic.

Magnus swallows, throat suddenly dry.  In halting words that trip over themselves and puddle on the floor, he explains.

Davenport was doing an experiment with Ichor, and it made him forget almost everything about himself.  Except his name. But he’s with Lucretia now. And she’s got an idea of how to help.

“Well,” says Lup slowly, sliding a plate with a pancake on it in front of Magnus.  “This is  _ not good _ .”

“No shit,” says Taako.  “We can go pick him up today, right?  And he’ll be better?”

Magnus shrugs, and pokes a fork into his pancake without looking at it.  “I hope so. But we’ll go pick him up at least. Hopefully Creesh’s got something figured out.”

“Here’s to that,” says Lup, and salutes him with her spatula.

Magnus looks down at the pancake to cut of a bit, and starts laughing.  It’s shaped like a dick.

\---

They pick up their quasi-father figure and probable captain later that afternoon.  Taako, it seems, is still not over the Kravitz thing, and has stolen some of Lup’s clothing so that he can wear all black.

Magnus feels like shit.  Maybe, just maybe, if he hadn’t told Agent Fisher about Kravitz... maybe everything would be okay.  

He’ll find a way to fix it, though.  He’s got to.

Lucretia meets them at the door, inside her two layers of fancy laser gates.  She’s got Davenport at her side, dressed in a new supersuit.

“I did my best,” she tells them solemnly.  “I’ve got an idea-- a connection in the Superhero Relocation Program, an Agent Junior-- who’s done quite a bit of research with the Ichor and it’s, hm, more unusual or unwanted effects.  I’m working on getting in touch with them.”

“So... what now?” asks Lup.

Lucretia looks down for a split second, then meets their eyes again.  “You can take Davenport home with you. He, he is aware of the world around him, but is only capable of saying his own name.  His suit should help regulate his power going out of control as it was yesterday, Magnus.”

“So he’s... what?” asks Taako bluntly.  “Fucked up? Completely gone?”

“On the contrary.  He retains much of his previous intelligence and strategic mind, but is simply less able to communicate that.”

Magnus thanks Lucretia for her help, and tries to pay her (she refuses just like she does almost everything-- with gravitas).

\---

Magnus gets a phone call late that night.  “Hello?” he says to the unfamiliar number.

“Hi, is this Mr. Incredible?” asks a male voice, smooth and polished.

“Yes,” Magnus says, immediately suspicious.

“Oh, good,” he sighs.  “My name is John. Elastigirl may have mentioned me to you, but I work with Merle Highchurch to organize her missions.”

_ Oh _ .  That makes sense.  But...

“Why’re you calling me?”

“Elastigirl’s been hurt on her last mission,” John says, sounding sad, almost worried.  “If you and the rest of the Incredibles want to come and see her...”

“We’ll be right there.”

And Magnus hangs up the phone.  And shouts to the rest of his family, “TEAM MEETING!”

Taako, Lup, and Davenport hurry to the very modern sofa in the very modern living room.  Magnus doesn’t waste any time. “Jules’s been hurt. I’m gonna go see her.”

“Are we coming?” asks Lup.

Magnus hesitates, then shakes his head.  “Can you two stay here with Davenport? I don’t want... don't want anything else to go wrong.”

Taako nods sharply.  “Give Jules our love.”

Magnus hugs them all, and races to the garage and his tiny car, and speeds to Highchurch’s fancy treehouse thing where Julia is.  Where Julia is, hurt. Where Julia is, hurt enough that John had to call him and tell him to come.

Magnus very purposefully does  _ not  _ think about how that kind of injury usually ends. He’s not going to lose his wife.  He  _ will  _ not.  Nof if there’s anything at all he can do about it.

\---

“Where is she?” he asks, desperate, adjusting his mask (having only just remembered to suit up) as he tumbles out the elevator into the treehouse.

“She’s in here,” says John elegantly, and leads Magnus through a quasi-greenhouse that’s all very crunchy to a walled off room in the middle.  “Head on in.”

John holds open the door: Magnus rushes in.

It is dark and still.  He fumbles for a lightswitch, but doesn’t find one.  “Jules?”

There’s a rustling sound in one of the dark corners of the room.  Magnus steps towards it, cautiously. “Jules? Julia?”

Something slams into him-- Magnus catches a brief glimpse of his wife’s swinging dreads, her supersuit--

The goggles on her face that drip black goo down her cheeks, oh gods Jules what’s  _ wrong _ \--

And then there are goggles on Magnus’s face, too, and all he can see is black and black and black, like he’s drowning in it, like it’s going to swallow him whole...

Magnus stands upright next to his wife, and looks to John.  “What would you like us to do?”

\---


	6. Lup

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lup worries.

Barry picks up the phone after it rings five or six times, long enough that she’s afraid it’ll just go to voicemail.  “Um, hello?” 

“Hey there,” she says, leaning back in her chair, glancing up to make sure Taako and Davenport are fine.  They are. “How’s it shakin’?”

“Alright,” Barry replies, faintly nervous.  It makes Lup smile a little. “You?”

She shrugs, and then remembers that he can’t hear a shrug.  “Well, Mags got a call and I guess Jules got hurt, so he went in to see her.  And, er, one of Dadn’port’s experiments went sideways and he’s, well, not the greatest.”

“I-- what’s wrong?”

“He was messing with the Ichor,” Lup says.  “From the Superhero Relocation Program. Y’know, the shit they use to erase people’s memories?  Anyway, he got kinda... memory wiped. A little bit.”

“Is he okay?” asks Barry, panicked.

“Oh, yeah, he’s fine.  Well, relatively.”

“Relatively isn’t exactly assuring vis a vis his, ah, status right now.”

“He can only say his name.”

“Oh, shit,” Barry breathes, and then, louder.  “Shit.”

“Yeah, babe.  Pretty much. Hey, you wanna come over?  It’s just me and Taako and Dav here, it’s weirdly quiet without Mags and Jules hanging around.”

“Sure,” says Barry, and hangs up very quickly.

Lup cracks her neck from one side to the other, and then yawns.  It’s getting late, and by all rights she would normally be in bed, but it’s still the weekend tomorrow.  She can sleep in. And besides, Taako and Davenport aren’t asleep, and fuck if Lup’s gonna leave them alone to rattle around the spacious, fancy house all by themselves.

At least Barry’s coming over now.  She doesn’t like all the quiet, the empty space.  It feels like a breath before a dive-- like the eye of a storm.

So really, it’s totally reasonable that Lup’s a little on edge.  She’s an adult, and shouldn’t be afraid of the dark. She’s a superhero, and shouldn’t be afraid of things that go bump in the night.

Lup likes to tell herself that she’s not.  She’s not afraid, of  _ course  _ she’s not.  She’s  _ Lup _ , y’know?  But it’s harder to pretend at night, when the darkness all around feels like it’s pressing in on her and no matter how many lights she turns on it never goes away.

She’s never been happier to see the bright glow of headlights as Barry’s car winds its way up their driveway.

“Who’s that?” Taako asks without much interest when the doorbell rings, idly turning a page of his magazine.  Lup glances at what he’s reading as she stands up-- two full pages of ads about old people medicine or some shit.  Yeah, he’s for  _ sure  _ not actually reading that.  

“Barry,” she says as she pulls the door open.

He’s in blue jeans, as he always is, but he’s got his supersuit on too.  Barry’s supersuit, much to Lucretia’s dismay,  _ used  _ to be very cool and stylish.  

As per his request, however, she changed the pants to be made of denim.  They have a fake rivalry thing going about the supersuit, and Lup thinks it’s  _ hilarious _ .  Who takes their supersuit back to its fucking intimidating-ass designer and asks for  _ blue jeans  _ instead?

He hurries in, and she closes the door behind him.

“How’s Davenport?”

“Davenport!” says Davenport.

“...oh,” says Barry.

“It’s worse in person,” Lup says softly.  “Yeah.”

“And is Julia okay?” he asks, looking around at the three of them.

Lup shrugs.  “Hopefully. We haven’t heard from Magnus yet, so... I hope she is.”

Barry sits down on the couch, perching on the edge, a good foot away from where Lup is.  Gods, he’s such a dork.

There’s a knock on the door.

Barry looks at Lup, who looks at Taako, who glances at Davenport before meeting his sister’s eyes.  He shrugs, like ‘might as well see who it is.’

She looks over at Davenport, the silent language of ‘what if it’s not safe?’

“I’ll get it,” Taako says out loud, rising to his feet.  Although he tried to denounce superhero-dom earlier that day, Lup can see the lines of his supersuit underneath the outfit that he’s wearing.  Can see his mask poking out of his back pocket.

The very modern house has a very modern floor plan, all open spaces and high ceilings, which means that even from the couch Lup has a very good view of who is outside the door.

It’s a group of people who look like superheroes.  Which is weird, since supers are illegal. She catches a glimpse of a hulking woman dressed in green, a shorter woman with blue tattoos, two men (one who looks droopy and the other wearing an aviator helmet), and in front of them all, a very small dark-skinned boy.

But something’s _ weird  _ about all of them.  Even though it doesn’t match their supersuits, each of the people outside their door are wearing  _ goggles _ .

“Uh, weird time of day to be selling fuckin’ girl scout cookies,” says Taako from the doorway.

The five people ignore her brother, push him forwards until they are inside the house and so are Taako and Lup and Davenport and Barry.

“Hello, sirs and ma’am!” says the little boy in the front, looking up at them.  His goggles are filled with a dripping black liquid that shimmers with rainbow hues.  It’s terrifying. “We’re going to have to ask all of you to please come with us!”

“Uh, the polite thing to do is introduce yourself, pumpkin,” says Taako, bullshitting his way through his fear as he casually steps backwards towards his family.

“My superhero name is the Detective!” pipes up the kid.  “These are Orc--” the muscle bound woman in green waves-- “Dragon--” woman with the blue tattoos-- “Aviator--” guy in the aviator helmet, which makes sense.  Now that he’s come into their house, Lup can see that he’s wearing aviator glasses  _ over  _ his creepy-ass goggles.  If it weren’t so scary, she’d laugh.  “And this is Music Man!”

The droopy guy looks over at them.  He’s wearing, like, fucking medieval pants.  Like he’s a jester or some shit.

“And why d’you need us to come with you, Detecy-boy?”

“That’s not my name, sir!”  replies Detective with a smile.  “We need you to come with us to help out your good friends Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl?”

“It’s the Hunger,” Barry breathes.

“It’s the what, sir?” says Detective.

“You’re the Hunger,” he accuses, rising to his feet, pushing on his superhero mask underneath his nerdy glasses.  “ _ You  _ are.  I...” he looks over at Lup, who’s applied her own mask by now.  “I thought Julia caught the guy doing that?”

“I thought so too,” she replies, wry.  “Apparently not.”

“Hey!” Taako yelps as Aviator tries to grab his arm.  A purple protection bubble blooms around Taako, forcing the brainwashed superhero backwards.

With the finality of a hundred years, Davenport rises to his feet.  He’s put his mask on, and his fists are balled in anger. He glowers at the Hunger intruders.  And, rising into the air, he growls, “ _ Davenport _ .”

\---

They learn soon enough that Orc is scary strong, stronger even than Magnus.  That Dragon can cut warp holes in space. That Aviator can’t fly like Davenport but can manipulate the wind, and that Music Man can make you stop what you’re doing and just start crying... but it’s Detective that’s the scariest.  

He’s just a little kid, is part of it.  But Detective seems to know what Lup’s about to do before she does it.  When she dashes towards the stairs-- hah! Dash!-- he’s blocking her way, shouting out for Dragon to warp her.  When Taako tries to put a protective bubble around Barry, Detective calls out for Aviator, and he manages to stop him.

They’re outnumbered, outplanned.

It’s all Lup can do to keep herself out of their clutches.  Because it’s obvious what they’re trying to do-- each Hunger-hero has another pair of dripping goggles in their hands.  They’re trying to put the goggles on her family.

They’re trying to brainwash them, too.

Lup runs as fast as she can.  She knocks the goggles out of Music Man’s hands just before she can put them on a half-dazed Taako.  She pulls Barry out of the way of one of Orc’s swinging fists. She punches Dragon just before she can dive through a warp on top of still-flying Davenport.

But it’s not enough.

There’s simply too many of them.  And try as Lup might, she’s smart enough to know that they can’t keep this up for long.  If these Hunger-heroes want to take them to Magnus and Julia, then that must mean...

That must meen Magnus and Julia have been Hunger-ified, as well.

Lup and Taako, Barry and Davenport-- they’re the heroes last hope.

So it’s  _ very _ fucking good that Taako’s an expert at coming up with weird, last-minute, crazy-but-it-works, plans.

He’s messing with some panel on the wall, a purple shield all around him.  Dragon cuts a warp inside of it, and Lup tumbles right into her, knocking her over and away.  She doesn’t know what Taako’s planning, but she trusts him.

And he delivers.

There’s a resounding roar outside.  Another set of headlights, coming fast-- so fast--

A car crashes through the huge windows, and Lup recognizes it in an instant.  It’s the getaway car she and Taako used to drive, back when they were low-level supervillains, back before they met Mags and Jules and Dav.

It’s a fucking excellent car-- all purple and shiny plating and gold and silver accents.  Taako gave it a name.

“Garryl!” he shouts, delighted, and flips his way around Aviator and into the driver's’ seat of their car.  Where’s it even  _ been _ ?

Lup jumps from the top of the staircase, snagging Davenport out of the air, tucking and rolling to her feet.  Although he can’t remember anything besides his name, Davenport is a force to be reckoned with-- and even when he  _ could  _ remember, Lup doesn’t think he would’ve ran away like they are now.

Hell, sometimes the coward’s way is the best.  Sometimes, it’s what lets you live to see another day.

“Barold, you goddamn  _ idiot _ \--” shouts Taako, and he revs Garryl’s engine, racing across the floor, but he’s too late--

Dragon warps into view behind Barry and slaps a set of goggles filled with the Hunger’s goo over his eyes.  He shudders, practically convulsing, and then goes still.

Lup screams, but Taako keeps driving.  She screams, and shouts for him to  _ go back  _ and  _ stop  _ and  _ don’t do this  _ but he ignores her.  They drive away, speeding, until Lup’s screams turn to tears turn to anger.

A fierce, burning anger deep within her.

“Where will they take him?  Where are Mags and Jules?” she asks Taako, asks anybody who will answer.

“Garryl?” Taako asks, in return.

“Yo, my people, what’s  _ up _ ,” says the car.  Lup forgot they gave it surfer speech as a joke that one time.  “You lookin’ for them? They’re onboard Highchurch’s yacht, y’know, the Wave--”

Garryl says something that sounds like “smasher” to finish the yacht’s name.  But speaking over him, louder, Taako says, “humper.”

“ _ What _ ?” asks Lup.

“The Wavehumper,” says Taako blithely.  “Shitty place, shitty people-- shitty fuckin’ name.”

A news article pulls up on Garryl’s screen.  Lup leans forward in her seat-- who gives a shit about seatbelts with everything that’s going on?-- and skims through it.

A huge international meeting of diplomats to take place tonight, on the Wavehumper.  Where they will...

“They’re signing to make supers legal again,” she breathes.  “I... and the Hunger’s gonna stop that.”

“That’s stupid,” says Taako.  “If the Hunger does that it’ll just show how much we need supers again.”

Lup looks over at him.  “Not if it’s brainwashed superheroes who are attacking them, Koko.”

“Aw, fuck.”

\---


	7. Barry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barry struggles.

Time passes in snippets, in blurs.  The world has gone pitch black and shiny.  Barry doesn’t like it, but also, he does. He zones in and out at a moment’s notice.  One second he is speaking, and the next he is getting into a car, and then out of a car.  

Cool air, tastes salty, tickles his skin.  It’s like the ocean, Barry thinks, the ocean that when it’s stormy matches Lup’s eyes--

And then he loses the thought, and he is not Barry any longer.

There is something he is fighting in the middle of his brain and he is losing.

His legs carry him up a gangplank, onto a surface that rocks and sways.  Must be a boat. A boat like the one time Taako forced him to go fishing--

He is losing the war in his mind.

Just like the war Davenport fought in as a fighter pilot--

Tearing him apart from the inside out.

Magnus once tore apart an entire log because somebody bet him he couldn’t--

Crumbling apart--

That one time Julia tried to make a cake and the whole thing fell apart when Taako poked it--

Barry is fighting a war in his head.  And Barry loses, and is Barry no longer.

Who is Barry?

He shakes his head.  It does not matter who Barry is or was.

Barry is unimportant, now.

There is only one thing that matters.

There is only one thing that he is.

He is the Hunger.

\---

Hunger-- Barry-- who is he?  There is other Hunger with him, who is  _ he _ ?  He is standing in a crowd, yes, shoulder to shoulder with superheroes that he knows.  He  _ knows  _ he knows them.

Mr. Incredible, someone calls the beefy one with sideburns.  Elastigirl, they call the woman with dreads. Somebody calls him Frozone.

That will do, Frozone thinks.  Because he is not Barry, and Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl are also the Hunger, so he is-- he is Frozone.

And that is that.

In the yacht-- the Wavesmasher-- the Wavehumper?  Why did he think of that?-- the ocean rolls beneath them.  Across the room that Frozone stands in the door slam shut. He can practically hear the tension of the crowd.

His mouth opens without concious effort or thought.  In haunting unison with Elastigirl and Mr. Incredible, he says, “Superheroes have cursed this world for too long.  We renounce our roles as protectors. You have hated us and cursed us-- and we do the same to you. You will die, and with you, so will your peace.”

The crowd is screaming.  Frozone and Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl follow John through the crowd of diplomats.  Behind them follow other Hunger-heroes, Orc and Dragon and Aviator, Music Man and Detective.  Orc has picked Merle up with both hands and is man-handling him out the doors that seal behind them.

“You five!” says John, pointing.  “Go make sure the perimeter is secure.  Frozone, Elastigirl, Mr. Incredible-- you’re with me.”

Orc holds up Merle, silently.  Well, she’s silent. Merle isn’t.

“What the hell are ya doin’, John?” he asks.

John raises one perfect eyebrow.  “Something I should’ve done a long time ago, Merle.  Superheroes have too much power over us. There’s nobody making sure they’re  _ actually  _ doing the right thing.  I’m fixing that.”

“You’re killing people!”

John sighs at him.  “Knock him out.”

Orc obliges, but carefully sets his body in the corner, leaning against the wall and sitting up.  Then, she follows Dragon and the others out of the door. Obeying the Hunger’s orders, securing the perimeter.

“You three,” John says, pointing at the three of them that remain in the room.  “Go to the bridge. Knock out all of the guards, except for one. Let him tell the mainland what heroes are doing.  Point the yacht towards the city of Neverwinter, and smash the controls.”

Frozone nods, sharply, and falls into step behind Elastigirl as she leads the way out of the room.  They are going to the bridge.

They are going to smash the Wavesmasher-- Wavehumper?  What?-- into the city and kill hundreds, maybe thousands.

They are going to obey orders.

\---


	8. Taako Reprise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taako meets somebody.

They’ve  _ barely  _ broken into the Wavehumper’s main building when Davenport goes missing, because of-fuckin’-course he does.  Nothing in Taako’s life can be easy, can it? Not even rescuing his idiot family from some Hunger bitch.

“Split up,” says Lup immediately.  “We gotta find him.”

“This is such a white people in a horror movie thing to do,” Taako snipes, but he listens to his sister.  They split up-- Lup turns right. Taako turns left. He trots down the eerily silent hallway, pausing at each fancy wooden door to listen.  For what, he’s not exactly sure. Maybe the pounding footsteps that herald Magnus. Or even the “Davenport!” of his captain. Hell, Taako would gladly take almost  _ anything  _ over this oppressive silence.

And then the elevator dings--  _ ding! _ \-- and Taako almost jumps out of his fuckin’ skin.  He presses himself up against the wall and concentrates hard, turning invisible.

God, he really needs to get a cool superhero name.

Invisible now, Taako creeps forwards as the elevator doors slide open.  Inside, facing away from him, is a very small boy. A very small, very brainwashed boy named Detective.

Okay, Taako thinks.  Okay.

If he can get those goggles off of him, will he go back to normal?

There’s only one way to find out.

Taako lunges forwards, into the elevator, one hand out to steal the goggles-- but Detective dodges.  

“I know you’re here, sir!” he cries.

And, oh yeah, fuck.  He’s not sure what Detective does but anybody with that kinda superhero name is probably pretty damn hard to sneak stuff by.

He blocks Taako again when he reaches for the mask, and again when he tries to hit it off with his elbow.

It’s almost like Detective is anticipating Taako’s every movement.  Which means, if he wants to sneak anything past the kid, he’s gonna have to do something entirely unexpected.

Taako is a  _ master  _ of unexpected.

He reaches back like he’s gonna slam the button to close the elevator doors, trapping him and Detective inside.  The kid blocks it, but apparently wasn’t expecting what’s next--

Taako, a bubble blooming from his invisible hands, but not around himself.  Not around Detective, or the elevator, or even the shitty fake potted plant outside the elevator.  No, Taako forms the bubble directly around the goggles that are on Detective’s face. 

They peel off and fall to the floor with an unpleasant wet  _ smack _ .

Taako lunges forward and steps on them, heel snapping them in half  _ very  _ fucking satisfyingly.

And then he remembers the kid.

“Um,” he says, very eloquently, staring down at this tiny kid.  Hunger goggles missing, he can now see that the kid’s wearing huge-ass nerd glasses.  “Sup, pumpkin?”

The kid takes a deep breath, lets it out.  Does it again, and then looks Taako in the eyes.  He switches out his nerd glasses for a superhero mask that probably has nerd glasses built into it or some shit.

“Hi,” says the kid cautiously.  “Um, I’m very sorry about that, sir, I was mindwiped by the Hunger also known as John who I do believe is about to crash this entire ship into the city of Neverwinter and--”

“Slow down, buckaroo,” says Taako quickly.  Behind them, the elevator doors slide shut. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” says Detective.  “Oh! It’s impolite to not ask for your name.  Your superhero name, I assume, because you are dressed like a superhero unless this is just the newest fashion in which case it looks very nice on you sir.”

“My, uh, my superhero name?” Taako squeaks.   _ Think _ , dammit,  _ think _ \--

“Yes, please.”

“Uh... Dupree.”

The kid smiles, and Taako’s already regretting that name.  “Does it mean anything, sir?”

“Uh... yes, it’s very, um, poignant and thought out and I for sure  _ didn’t  _ just say the first thing that came to mind, bubala.”

Detective laughs a little.  “If you say so, sir! Do you have a plan to save Neverwinter and also the reputation of superheroes everywhere?”

Taako takes a deep breath.  He doesn’t do kids.

But he already kinda loves this one.

He takes another breath.  “We find Daven-- uh, Starblaster-- and Dash.”  Curse their stupid fucking hero names. “And then we find the other brainwashed superheroes, turn this hell yacht away from Neverwinter, uh, catch the bad guy and save the day!  Easy peasy, pumpkin.”

The elevator dings, and the doors slide open.  Detective looks up at Taako, very seriously. “Let’s go kick their asses, sir.”

\---

Where the  _ fuck  _ is Lup?  And for that matter, where the  _ fuck  _ is  _ Davenport _ ?  Taako swears they’ve checked every room in this goddamned yacht and still his family is nowhere to be found.

He goes to pull open a door that says  _ Stairwell  _ on the outside, but Detective pulls him back by the sleeve.  Taako glares down at him, and immediately stops glaring as the door swings open, Orc behind it.

Her goggles are still on.

Well, shit.

Here we go again.

Taako doesn’t like the fighting part of superhero work, not really.  That’s kinda why being a supervillain had been so fun-- half the hard stuff was in the planning.  And that’s where Taako fucking  _ excels _ .  

But sometimes fighting is necessary, even though he’s kinda bad at it.  He gets tossed around by Orc, only escapes serious harm by turning invisible at the last second.

And then Detective steps up.  Orc moves to attack him, but then visibly restrains herself, her muscles shaking as she tries desperately to not pummel Detective into the ground.

It probably sucks ass for her, but it gives Taako all the time that he needs to steal her goggles right off her face and shatter them against the floor.

Orc tumbles to the floor-- Detective moving out of the way a second before she started to fall forwards.

“Shit!” Taako yelps.  “Uh, Orc lady, you good?”

She groans, which is probably good.  She’s not dead yet, then.

“Orc?” says Detective, and helps her to her feet.  She’s got a big ‘ol bruise on her forehead, but nothing that won’t heal.

“Detective?” she says, pressing her hands to her temples.  “I... I... where’s Carey? What’s going on?”

“You and I, also Carey and--” he glances up at Taako-- “Music Man and Aviator were enslaved and brainwashed by the Hunger, ma’am.  It’s those goggles.” Detective points down at Orc’s shattered pair. “Currently we are working with Dupree-”

God, that’s the worst fucking superhero name.  Taako hates everything.

“--to stop the yacht from running into Neverwinter and killing thousands!”

Orc nods slowly.  “Is Carey alright?”

“Is that Dragon?” Taako asks.

“Yeah.”

“Well, she’ll be peachy keen once we get those goggles offa her, which isn’t gonna happen unless we blow this popsicle stand already, kapish?”

Orc straightens her shoulders and nods resolutely.  “Let’s go.”

\---

They run into Lup, quite literally.  Or she runs into them. Taako and Orc and Detective are rounding another corner when he barrels smack into his twin sister.  Only Orc’s quick reflexes keep Taako from falling on his ass.

“Music Man!  Aviator!” says Detective, running around Lup to give his two de-goggled compatriots a hug each.

“Hey, lil man,” says Music Man, voice exactly as droopy as Taako’d thought it would be.  “Glad you’re not Hunger-ified.”

“Me too, sir!”

“Have you seen Starblaster?” asks Lup.  She’s a lot better at remembering superhero names than Taako is.

He shakes his head.  “Nope. We’ve been looking, though.”

“And you need to find your other friends, right sir and ma’am?” says Detective.  “Mr. Incredible and Ms. Elastigirl and Mr. Frozone?”

Lup looks down at Detective, and then back up at Taako.  “Where’d you  _ find  _ this kid?”

“In an elevator,” Taako says, very nonchalant.  “Where kids usually are, y’know?”

“But yeah,” Lup says, shaking her head a little as she remembers to actually answer Detective’s question.  “We gotta find them, too.”

“And Carey,” says Orc, and sighs when everybody looks at her.  “Dragon. If we really need to use hero names at this point.”

“I personally am very attached to my superhero name, ma’am!” chirps Detective.  “Although I really do like my normal flesh boy name, too!”

Taako stares at him.  “That... was kinda creepy, pumpkin.”

Detective opens his mouth to respond, but then the vent above his head crashes open and something falls towards his head.

Something falls--

And bounces off the shimmering purple bubble that appeared around Detective.  The kid superhero beams up at Taako, adjusting his mask. “Thank you for saving me, sir!”

The shield fizzles out.  “No problem, pumpkin.” Taako walks over to the thing that fell.  “Let’s see what’s up with this.”

It soon becomes very evident that ‘this’ is not an item at all.  It’s two people, who quickly untangle themselves: Davenport! And a slim, blue-tattooed woman that Orc immediately grabs in a hug.

“You good?” she asks Dragon, her wife.

“Pshaw, yeah,” Dragon-- or Carey, whatever floats your hijacked yacht-- replies with a grin.  “Love not being Hunger-ified.”

“Me too, babe.”

“Davenport!” says Davenport urgently, glaring up at Taako.

“Oh, right,” he says.  “Guys, uh, I’m real glad you’re good and all that but we gotta go save, like, all of Neverwinter.”

“Let’s turn this ship around,” says Lup, putting her hands on her hips, classic comic book superhero style.  “To the bridge!”

Everybody cheers.  

Detective raises his hand like he’s waiting for a teacher to call on him.  Taako says, “Yes, Kid Detective?”

“You should send some of our group back to the diplomats,” he pipes up.  “In case we do crash, it’s the logical course of action to get them to life boats!”

Taako nods.  That... is actually pretty smart.  “Okay, uh... Orc and Dragon, and Music Man and Aviator, you got that?”

Dragon, still in her wife’s arms, shoots him a salute.  He’s pretty sure it’s ironic. He hopes it is, anyway. 

“Go unlock the doors and get them to the lifeboats?” asks Music Man, all droopy.  “Yeah, we got this.”

“You not going with them, Detective?” asks Lup.

He shakes his head firmly, staring up at them.  “No, ma’am! They are all very capable superheroes who can handle themselves.”

“You’re a kid,” she says, voice softening.  “You shouldn’t be ‘handling’ any of this at all.”

“I’m a very mature kid!”

“No excuses, pumpkin,” says Taako.  “You’re going with the others.”

Detective crosses his arms across his chest.  “No I’m not!”

“Davenport,” says Davenport sternly, and pushes Detective over by Orc and Aviator.  “Davenport.”

Detective sighs.  “Okay,  _ fine _ .”

“Wait, you can  _ understand  _ him?” asks Taako.  “Actually, strike that, we’ll pursue that conversation, uh,  _ after  _ we save the world.  Kapish, bubala?”

He holds his hand out for a fist bump.

Detective grins up at him, and fist bumps Taako back.  “Kapish.”

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yo thanks for reading this!
> 
> it's also worth saying that stopsavannah commented asking if Syndrome is Sazed and theyre so abosolutely right. Also, that blonde lady (who Mr Incredible wouldn't kill)? that's Kalen all the way


	9. Davenport

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Davenport fights.

The three of them-- Davenport, Taako, and Lup-- race through the yacht towards the bridge.  Back before Davenport was an ace fighter pilot and a superhero, he used to sail. He knows sailboats and motorboats and yachts, fishing boats and dugouts and kayaks.

And even though the Wavesmasher-- or the Wavehumper, as the Taaco twins have taken to calling it-- is a thousand times bigger than any yacht Davenport’s ever sailed, he knows where the bridge is.

Up and up, as far as you can go.

Davenport’s a good head or two shorter than the twins, and even though they’re both running in heels it’s hard to keep up with them.  He uses his superpower-- his power of flight, the reason he’s named the Starblaster (actually, the reason he’s named that is because he lost a drunken bet with Taako, but that’s another story)-- to propel himself forward and faster.  There’s no time to lose or waste.

See, Davenport knows ships.  And they’re traveling fast, towards land.

And traveling fast towards land going very fast isn’t even a question you need an experienced sailor to answer. 

It’s like a basic physics problem, like the ones he took in his very first college class.  Physics 113. 

A sailing ship that weighs six thousand tons sails towards Neverwinter at seventy-five miles per hour.  It begins twenty-five miles off the coast. Disregarding wind resistance, at what time will the yacht crash into Neverwinter and cause untold amounts of death and destruction?

Disregarding wind resistance, what would you do to stop it?  How much would you give?

The answer: Everything.

\---

They burst into the bridge without a pause.  Inside is carnage. Navigations systems, top of the line computers, radar machines, fancy radios-- all smashed beyond repair.  Ripped up and tossed about like daisies.

Chairs, overturned.  Three bodies wearing the staff uniform-- the pilots, the drivers, the navigators-- lying about unconscious.

Davenport feels his fists tighten.  His family did this. They were brainwashed until they had no free will of their own and forced to do the very thing they hate most of all-- hurt the people who depend on them for protection.

“Davenport,” he growls, angry.  At the Hunger, at the world, at his stupid slip of hand with the Ichor that has left him reduced to just his name.

Lucretia thinks it stole everything but his name, but Davenport knows better.  He’s still got all of it, but every time he tries to speak or say anything at all, it’s the only word he’s got left.  The Ichor didn’t steal his memories: it only stole his words.

There’s a shuffling noise in the far corner of the bridge, and he spins towards it on instinct.

Behind them, the door slams shut.

“Aw, shit,” says Taako very matter-of factly, as out of the shadows melt three very familiar people, each dressed up in their respective supersuit.  Their supersuits, and a pair of goggles oozing black tar down their cheeks.

Julia.  Magnus. And Barry.

None of them speak.  They just circle around Davenport and Taako and Lup, predatory.

“Well, are we starting this party or, uh,  _ not _ ?” asks Taako, and he turns invisible.

\---

They get Barry first.  Lup runs circles around him, and Taako bubbles off Magnus and just manages to trip Julia so that Davenport can swoop in and snatch the goggles off of his face.  He flings them to the floor in disgust, and relishes the shatter.

Barry blinks, shakes his head, accepts Lup’s hand to get to his feet.  He stands there for a long moment, holding her hand, staring into her eyes.

Taako coughs pointedly, dodging Magnus’s swinging fists.  “A little help, lovebirds?”

Barry blushes fiercely, coughs into his fist, and joins the fray.  Lup just laughs, wild and free, and races after him.

Lup and Barry make a good team, Davenport thinks idly, dropping out of the air just in time to avoid Julia’s stretching arm aimed for his throat.  He feels the whoosh of air on the top of his head. They engage Magnus together, tag-teaming him. Barry freezes a limb with ice, and Lup races in to distract him long enough for Barry to get another one--

Julia’s leg connects to Davenport’s side, and he falls with a panicked, “Davenport!”

But then Taako is there, bubbling around him, letting Julia’s ferocious attacks fall off the purple field like rainwater.  “You good, Dadn’port?” he asks, helping him to his feet.

Davenport adjusts his mask, and nods sharply.  “Davenport.”

Taako grins, feral.  “Let’s do this.”

The bubble dissolves around them, and the sheer force of nature that is Julia Burnsides is upon them.

See, there’s something the Hunger did wrong, Davenport thinks.  Fighting alone, Julia is a force of nature. But fighting with Magnus, with her family?  She is  _ unstoppable _ .

And the Hunger made the mistake of dividing them.

Lup and Barry shatter Magnus’s goggles.  Taako manages to bubble one of Julia’s arms, and Barry freezes her torso, just long enough for Davenport to grab her goggles.

He smashes them like an empty glass on the side wall of the bridge.

“Oh my god,” she gasps, dropping to her knees.

“Jules!” Magnus cries, springing to her side even though just moments ago he was on the floor recovering from the brainwash.

She looks up at him, eyes tired but blazing with fury.  “We gotta stop this goddamn boat.”

\---

A plan is made.  With the steering smashed beyond anything Davenport’s engineering training can solve, there’s no way for them to steer the Wavehumper away from Neverwinter.  They’re getting close, now-- too close for comfort. He can see the city’s skyline through the front window.

They will go down into the water.  Drop the anchor. Magnus will swim and turn the rudder manually.

They will save the day.  Everything will be alright.

Because they are superheroes, imperfect though they are.  And superhero stories always end when the day is saved.

Davenport adjusts his mask as they set out.  The day isn’t saved yet. And although Neverwinter is fast approaching, they haven’t hit it yet.

They still have time to earn a happy ending.

\---

A plane rises from the top of the Wavehumper.  Through the front windshield they see John, piloting.  John, the Hunger, the big bad. John,  _ escaping _ .

For a second, maybe less, Davenport can see the fight scene at the end.  He, the flying hero, will engage the plane. He will condemn John for his misdeeds.  He will fling him into the ocean.

But then Julia turns to Magnus.  “Throw me!” she says, eyes alight, and he does.  He flings her flexible body into the air and she latches onto the end of John’s rising plane.

And Davenport remembers.

He is in this story.  He is part of this story.  But the battle with John is not his to fight.  If anybody has earned it, it’s Julia.

Davenport and the others race downstairs.  They trust Julia to stop the villain. But in a real superhero story, the avenging superhero is always greeted by a cheering crowd.

They’ve got to stop this yacht to make sure there  _ is  _ a cheering crowd.

Maybe three flights down, something catches Davenport’s eye through the door from the stairwell, and he pauses, trying to get a better look at what it is.

Barry and the twins stop to wait for him.  

“Davenport,” he says firmly, and motions for them to keep going.  Lup looks like she wants to stay, but instead she follows Barry and Taako down, down, down.  

They can save the day.  Maybe Davenport will join them.  But first...

He eases through the door.

Something is slumped in the far corner, and as he approaches, it gets worse.  Because it’s not a thing, not some discarded package or lazily dropped coat. Pushed up unconscious into the corner is a person.

“Davenport,” Davenport says, kneeling in front of him and gently shaking his shoulders.  It’s some guy dressed in party finery, with a bushy beard and sun-tanned skin. “Davenport!”

Slowly, thankfully, the man’s eyes blink open, bleary.  “I musta died and gone to heaven,” he says slowly.

Davenport just looks at him in sheer and utter confusion.

He cracks a smile.  “Otherwise there wouldn’t be an angel standing in front of me.”

Who  _ is  _ this guy?  Davenport, robbed of words, pokes a finger into his chest, offers him a hand up.

“I’m Merle,” he says.  “Merle Highchurch.”

“Davenport,” he replies, and for the first time having only one word feels okay.

“You a superhero?”

He nods, and Merle grins.  “Bet you’re off to save the day.  Mind if I tag along?”

No, Davenport doesn’t mind.  He doesn’t mind at all.

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos are my bread and butter! If you liked this chapter, please let me know!!


	10. Lup Reprise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Answers and closure, to a degree.

She’s still not quite sure how, but they  _ did it _ .  Their ridiculous, crazy plan actually  _ worked _ !  Julia hauled John’s ass out of that plane in handcuffs, and sent him to jail for, like, forever.

Neverwinter is saved!  The Incredibles are hailed as heroes!  Lup and Taako get their picture on the very front page of the newspaper, and she loses her entire shit when she finds out that his superhero name is  _ Dupree _ .

(“Who  _ named you _ ?” she wheezes when the article comes out.  “Bobo the  _ Clown _ ?”

“Somebody with very refined taste,” says Taako, crossing his arms and not looking at her.  Which means that he named himself without thinking about it, and now has to live with the consequences.  Lup thinks it’s  _ hilarious _ .)

But even better things come out of it than saving a thousand lives and legalising superheroes again.

Lucretia works late into the night, often phoning Lup at three in the morning in a desperate plea for coffee that she’s glad to oblige.  After a solid one hundred and four hours awake, and a frankly ridiculous amount of coffee later (even by Lup’s standards), Lucretia has solved it.

Another Agent of the Superhero Relocation Program had been experimenting with the Ichor.  Particularly, they had been working on how to restore the lost memories of the person affected.

Working together, Lucretia and Agent Junior produce an anti-Ichor.  A Remembrance.

Davenport is the first to try it.  His first words are, “I still can’t believe you renamed the yacht the  _ Wavehumper _ .”

Lup absolutely loses it.

\---

It is fascinating, though, learning about the Ichor from Davenport.  He hadn’t lost his memories, he explains, just the ability to process them.  To speak them.

Taako furrows his brow, pulls out his phone, and hurries out of the room.  Lup thinks about going after him, but he’s a big boy. Plus, Barry just showed up, and he brought muffins.

And if she flirts a little more than usual with him as they eagerly return to their “giving other people superpowers” experiment, or the “poorly disguised experiment to get Lup fire powers” as Taako calls it, well... Lup won’t admit how much fun she’s having.

But still.  It’s not like it’s going to  _ go  _ anywhere.  They’re just friends.  Lup flirts with everybody.  

And it’s not like he would like her back.  He’s  _ Barry  _ fucking  _ Bluejeans _ .  He’s a nerd and a disaster and genuinely thinks ketchup is spicy.  His supersuit has actual legitimate denim in it and he knows her coffee order by heart and is helping her design some cool-ass fire powers.

He’s way too good of a person for somebody like Lup, right?

When she expresses these sentiments to Taako, he just sighs, hits her with a pillow, and tells her to “get her fucking act together and ask him out already.”

“I will when you figure out your Kravitz deal,” she accuses, trying to hide her blush.

He hits her with the pillow again.  “Agent Fisher erased his fuckin’ memory, Lulu, not much ch’boy can do about that.”

She raises an eyebrow at him, steals the pillow.  “Koko, you idiot, what literally  _ just  _ happened with Davenport?”

“I...” He stands up and leaves the room.

Lup’s laughter follows him out into the hall.

\---

After much overeager poking and prodding from the rest of the Incredibles (plus Lucretia and Merle, who’s pretty much dating Davenport in all but name), Taako and Kravitz finally go on their long-awaited Chug’n Squeeze date.

“I can just take the bus,” Taako protests for the millionth time, adjusting one of his earrings.  “ _ Please  _ god just let me take the bus.”

“No!” says Magnus joyfully.  “This is a  _ family  _ event!  We’re taking Garryl!”

“I hate you all,” he breathes as the seven of them pile into the shiny purple car and drive away.  “Seriously. I hate you so much.”

“Love you too, bro bro,” Lup grins, tucking a stray curl back into her brother’s braid.  “Lookin’ good. Kravvy boy’s not gonna know what hit him.”

Taako winks at her, then slaps her hand away.

“This is a family event,” Davenport reminds him from the driver’s seat of Garryl.  (After a very quick rock paper scissors match with Taako, he won the right to drive.  He also insisted that he’d been a professional racecar driver when he was younger, which... honestly, considering his ridiculous backstory, wouldn’t even surprise Lup if it were true.)  “And that means we all get to make pots, too.”

“No you fuckin’ don't,” Taako retorts.  “You get to go see a movie or find some other guy to torment about his date.”

Davenport does an illegal u-turn to steal a parking spot just before a car patterned to look like a hammerhead shark can get it.  The hammerhead car honks at them. Lup rolls down her window, flips them off.

“Yes, uh, we kind of do,” says Barry from the middle seat in the back row, sounding apologetic.  “We, um, made reservations there too.”

“This family is a disaster,” Taako grumbles as they pile out of Garryl and onto the sidewalk.  Lucretia, waiting to join them, raises an eyebrow at him.

“Aw, c’mon, you love us,” Lup says, slinging an arm around his shoulders.  He shakes it off, pokes her in the ribs.

“Oh, Creesh!” she says, letting go of her little brother and running up to link her arm through Lucretia’s.  “I’m glad you made it!”

She just smiles.  “In the words of Davenport, ahem, ‘Lucretia you are a member of this family like it or not so get you ass over there  _ on time _ .’”

“Hey,” Davenport protests.  “I did not say it like that.”

“I have records to prove you did.”

“Maybe they’re  _ faked _ ,” says Magnus, gesturing wildly.  “Maybe--”

He’s interrupted by a distant siren, getting closer and closer.  Gunshots, and the sound of screeching tires.

“Excellent,” Julia breathes, already pulling out her mask from the pocket of her pants.

“Pick me up!” Taako shouts to the rest of them, and darts into the Chug’n Squeeze.

Lup shoots him finger guns, grabs Barry’s arm, and their whole family-- Julia and Mags, Dav and Merle, Lucretia and Barry and her-- all pile back into Garryl.  

“Long time no see,” the car says, surfer voice in full deadpan mode.

The tires screech as Davenport races into the traffic of inner-city Neverwinter, doing a few wild maneuvers to get around a convoy of mini vans and back towards the Chug’n Squeeze.  Thankfully Taako runs out then because they’re parked  _ very  _ illegally.

He’s hand in hand with Kravitz, who is wearing a full on three piece suit and very tasteful golden jewelry.  Lup feels her grin deepen, and leans her head onto Barry’s shoulder. “I like him.”

“Kravitz?” Barry asks.

“Yup.  Taako’s already fucking  _ smitten _ .”

The two of them slide into the middle row of seats.  Kravitz, like a nerd (like Barry, Lup thinks, and feels herself blush.  Fuck off, blush.) buckles up his seatbelt.

“Yo,” says Garryl.

“Was that... the car?” asks Kravitz,as Davenport rounds a corner, chasing the sirens, with a screech.

“Yeah,” says Lup, nonchalant, leaning over their row of seats and putting her forearms on the backrests.  She’s presses her mask to her face. “Anyway, hi Kravvy, I’m Lup and if you hurt Taako I’ll end you, do you know how to fire a gun?”

“Um.”

“I’ve got an extra mask,” says Lucretia, passing Kravitz a black superhero mask that matches his suit.  Lup admires her preparation.

He takes it.  “Um.”

The gunshots grow closer.  Merle whoops as Davenport revs the engine.  He’s wearing a mask too, as is Lucretia, even though they don’t technically have superpowers.  God, her family is nerds.

Taako shoves his own mask onto his face, and helps Kravitz put his on. “Kind of a clammy one.”

“Kind of a weird thing to say to your date,” Lup remarks as she hands Kravitz a gun.

“He’s cold!” Taako protests.  “Feel!”

“Nah,” she says, pulling on her supersuit.  “I’m not gonna steal your man.”

“Yeah,” he bites back, “You got one of your own.”  And then, like a traitor, he glares directly at Barry.  Barry blushes in response.

“I,” says Kravitz as Davenport rolls down the top of Garryl so they can feel the wind in their hair, “I don’t have a superpower, Taako.  I don’t think I’m supposed to be doing this kind of thing?”

“Nonsense,” Taako replies, tossing his braid over his shoulder as he rises on his knees to see over the back of the car.  Lup winks at him, cracks her knuckles. “Don’t need a superpower to do good. Half the fools in this car don’t have one. It’s all about what you  _ do _ , power or no.”

“Come on!” shouts Lucretia, firing a gun at the car the police are pursuing.  She barely misses. “Give us a hand, here?”

She stays in the car long enough to watch Taako help Kravitz steady his gun.  And then Lup leaps out of the roof of the car, landing on her feet and already running towards the fight.  Around her, the world blurs. All that is real is Lup and the road, running on and on and on into forever.

\---

And everything gets it’s happy ending.  They arrest the drivers of the car-- some guys in matching leather jackets, in a car patterned like a hammerhead.  Lup blows them a kiss as they’re packed into the police car.

“Hello, sirs and ma’ams!” says a voice.

Lup looks down.  Standing in front of her is one little boy.  He seems weirdly familiar.

Taako grins down at him, one hand in Kravitz’s.  Lup is a  _ very  _ nice sister because she’s not actively pointing that out.  “Well, hello there Detect--”

“Not here, sir!” Detective chirps.  “When I’m not wearing a mask, you can call me Angus McDonald!”

“Alright then, Agnes,” says Taako, leaning against Kravitz, “What’s a kiddo like you doin’ out fighting crime?”

“That’s not my name, sir,” he says, but he’s smiling.  “And technically I’m not fighting crime! I’m doing a job shadow!”

“With...” he glances at the Hammerheads.  “With  _ them _ ?”

“Crime is bad,” Lup says seriously.

Angus looks disappointed.  “Of course I’m no, sir. And yes, ma’am, I know that crimes are bad things to do!  I’m job shadowing some of my friends who work in the police and intelligence agencies!”  He waves over at the police cars.

Somehow, Lup’s not at all surprised when out of the cars, wearing actual police uniforms, hop Orc and Dragon.  And their detectives-- Music Man and Aviator.

“It’s a regular squad meetup, huh bubala?” says Taako.

“You could say so!” Angus chirps.  “I already know most of your family from the papers, but you haven’t introduced me to your date, sir!”

“You want his hero name?” asks Julia, reaching across the gathering with her stretchy superpower to drape an arm across Taako’s shoulders.

“Hello, Ms. Elastigirl!  And yes, I would like that very much!  Because he is wearing a mask, I assume he has one, although perhaps at some point when you feel comfortable taking off your masks around me I could learn your real names!”

“You’re expecting me to believe that  _ Detective  _ doesn’t know my real name?” asks Taako, tousling the kid’s hair.  “Losing your touch there, D’jango.”

“Still not my name,” he says, then turns to Kravitz.  “Your superhero name, sir?”

Lup grins at Taako and Kravitz.  Taako’s panicked superhero name was Dupree, and she’s silently hoping that Kravitz’s will be even dorkier.  That’d be the  _ perfect  _ teasing material against her little brother.

“The Grim Reaper,” says Kravitz, in some... weird version of his normal voice.  Is... is that an  _ accent _ ?

Lup starts laughing as Kravitz and Taako and Jules keep talking to Angus.  She has to slap a hand over her mouth, leans up against Barry’s shoulder.

“Um, Lup?” he asks.  “You okay there?”

“He’s got a fake  _ accent _ ,” Lup manages, still giggling.  “Like... holy shit, who  _ does  _ that?”

“A better question is who’s attracted to that?” he adds.

Lup loses it again, and leans back a little and looks at Barry.  He’s wearing his nerd-ass supersuit with blue jeans built into it, and he’s got his glasses on over his mask, and the longer he looks the more he blushes.

God, this is silly.

“Lup?” he squeaks.

“I’m gonna kiss you,” she decides.  “That cool?”

“I, um, very, very cool?”

Lup rolls her eyes, grinning, and leans in.

\---

“STOP MAKING OUT!” shouts Magnus in Lup’s ear.  She flips him off, but she and Barry separate. He’s blushing even more now.  

“Fuck off, Maggie,” Lup retorts.  She reaches out a hand and takes Barry’s, squeezes it a little bit.

“I hate to interrupt this touching moment,” says Julia to them. “But we’ve still got reservations at the Chug’n Squeeze in, like, three minutes.”

“What do you say?” Lup asks Barry, grinning.   “You up for a good ol’ fashioned wine and pottery date?”

“I can’t believe you’re stealing my  _ date ideas _ now,” Taako grumbles.

“I can’t believe you’re not sharing with your only sister,” she retorts.

After more bickering, their motley group walks back to the Chug’n Squeeze.  They’re late, but that’s okay. That’s just part of family, Lup figures. Everybody’s messed up and weird, superpowered or no.

What really matters is how you stick together.  You stick together, and you go down fighting, and you make it out the other side.

_ And _ , you have barbeque plans next Friday with Angus McDonald and his superpowered gang.

No size limit on family, after all.  

Lup squeezes Barry’s hand, peeling off her mask.  The street around them is quiet, but the whisper of the leaves in the trees is enough.  “Hear that, babe?”

He looks up at the trees, listens to their rustle.  It is peaceful. In the distance, traffic flows. Cars honk.  Vendors peddle their wares. It is a calm city scene-- no sirens going off or gunshots in the distance.  It’s everything Lup could want as praise for their crime-fighting efforts.

This silence is the best applause she can imagine.

“We’re  _ legends _ .”

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woah! Thanks for taking this wild ride with me!

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Fall Out Boy's "The Last of the Real Ones" which you can find [here](https://youtu.be/z9xJ3y7SM7Q)


End file.
